Gravity
by Ymir Eberhardt
Summary: (SuiKasen oneshot) "Without pain, we know no pleasure. But with pain comes an unbearable scar that I can't hide even if I try. Sake dulls its ache and leaves me in a reeling pleasure so lovely that I can't turn around, and as I feel its effects wear off, all I want is to feel its high again." M for violence and rape.


**Something always brings me back to you.  
It never takes too long.**

My gourd sits atop the shelf, just out of reach enough to be agitating. I know I need to stop this for the sake of my friends and Kasen, but I've never been able to follow through.

And the older I get, the worse I gets, and the more I hate it.

**No matter what I say or do  
I'll still feel you here  
'til the moment I'm gone.**

Without pain, we know no pleasure. But with pain comes an unbearable scar that I can't hide even if I try. Sake dulls its ache and leaves me in a reeling pleasure so lovely that I can't turn around, and as I feel its effects wear off, all I want is to feel its high again.

**You hold me without touch.  
You keep me without chains.**

It's my coping mechanism, my friend in the loneliest hours when life hurts too much and there's no one to listen to me cry. But it's becoming a crutch. I can't deal with life anymore.

**I never wanted anything so much  
Than to drown in your love  
And not feel your rain.**

If only I could stay this high and never crash. But then I wouldn't know that I could feel pleasure, either. I'd stay in limbo between misery and ecstasy.

**Set me free.  
Leave me be.  
I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.**

Kasen was the love of my life, back in the Ooeyama days. During our marriage, she was always my rock, the person who kept me sane. She had advised me not to attend that party the humans invited me to, but I was naive and didn't listen, and the torture that the partygoers made me endure was enough to sacrifice our love and intimacy and replace it with alcohol.

**Here I am and I stand  
So tall,  
Just the way I'm supposed to be.**

I can never have her know how much I hurt inside. I'm supposed to be the bubbly, social one, the most talkative and friendly of all of our kind. And when I'm bleeding on the inside, I lose my position as being our link to humans. I never wanted to be their enemy, nor did I want to become Kasen's.

**But you're onto me  
And all over me.**

And now sake is my only release. The burn of its strength gives me wings to fly from my pain, to forget about how much I miss Kasen and how much I regret all I've done in the past.

**You loved me 'cause I'm fragile  
When I thought that I was strong.**

Oni are supposed to take problems head-on, never ignoring anything. We're warriors by nature. I think that not all of my kind have been through as much as I have and still have the strength to fight.

**But you touch me for a little while  
And all my fragile strength is gone.**

When I'm intoxicated, I can forget it all and just be like everyone else. Perhaps I'm staggering too much or I laugh when I hurt physically, but getting physically hurt and being drunk are nowhere near as unbearable as how I feel sober.

**Set me free.  
Leave me be.  
I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.**

We all drink. There's no denying that. But reasoning is the difference between myself and my kind. Most of them just like increasing the high, and I want to stay with it forever.

**Here I am and I stand  
So tall,  
Just the way I'm supposed to be.**

But now I'm the silly drunk. That's all I am to the humans and youkai here. And that's fine sometimes, but it's lonely here when I'm hung over and there's no one to hold me.

**But you're onto me  
And all over me.**

Kasen said she'd be there if I gave up my gourd. Of course she'd let me casually drink like all of us oni do, but she doesn't trust me carrying a wine worm that converts water to sake all the time. She claims it's not healthy to be an addict.

**I live here on my knees  
As I try to make you see  
That you're everything I think I need  
Here on the ground.**

And I accepted. Being without her is worse somehow than being without my sake. I'm just so lonely.

**But you're neither friend nor foe  
Though I can't seem to let you go.**

But sake has its good qualities. It lightens the mood, makes parties better, and it's become a comedic crutch for me when I'm around my non-oni friends. And the way _my_ sake makes me feel is better than any other drink I've inhaled.

**The one thing that I still know  
Is that you're keeping me down.**

I push the shelf over, and all of its contents fall to the ground, just like my feelings did after the man at that party took advantage of me. I could feel all the hardships I had faced were falling like rain around me, each droplet soaking into my skin and leaving a permanent watermark.

I see my friends from childhood dying beneath our attacker. I was so dumb at eight years old, figuring that no one bigger than us children would come for our stuff. And I was so frozen on the spot. I couldn't protect them.

I see Tsuki, the oni child Yuugi and I took on nurturing, being drug into our house by one of the tengu captors. And I can still hear her shrill screams of pain as he took her, and I couldn't do anything about it.

I can still feel how it felt to be ravaged like that; the other tengu had me tied to the tree so I couldn't fight him off. And all I could do was sit there and let him do horrible things to me as guilt churns inside of me.

I see all the corpses of the tengu my oni friends and I took on during the rebellion, all stacked atop one another, wings broken and hearts stopped. I didn't let anyone see how hard I cried after that. I could never kill as easily as oni like Yuugi can. I could feel their lives too much. I'm too in-tune to the spiritual world to be a coldblooded murderer, even if I am angry.

And I do get angry. And like all oni, I get violent and physical when anger controls me. We are kami of lust and passion, after all. But I always feel guilt and pain too unbearable for me to handle.

The objects fall in slow motion, and I feel like my heart's stopping.

_Without pain, we know no pleasure._

There have been good things in my life before alcoholism took over. Being Yuugi's best friend, meeting more of my own kind, finally feeling camaraderie and oneness with oni after the conquer of the tengu, falling in love with Kasen...I can't drink away the good parts in life.

**Something always brings me back to you.  
It never takes too long.**

The sake's all over the floor now that the gourd has fallen. I pick it up gingerly, running my finger along the cracks. I hook it to my belt and go over to Kasen's house. As soon as she sees me, I tell her that I'm done and here for her.

Maybe pain isn't easy for me to handle. Maybe I'm a loose cannon afraid to feel negativity. But if I have her, then we can take on the world together.


End file.
